Francis Drake Essay, Research Paper

Author John Guy

Drake, a 16th Century Explorer

Ticktock Publishing-1997

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE

Sir Francis Drake is known for England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada. He was a sea dog and he sailed around the world. Drake was actually the first one to sail around the world since Magellan died in his journey.

Drake was a “sea dog” during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the first. And as everyone knows this is a good time to be a sea dog because the queen highly supported them. She gave him money and ships to raid the Spanish shipping. Drake was the most feared sea dog in his time.

He didn’t have a very exciting life when he was younger but he did grow up sailing on short trips on the English coast. Since a young age he knew he wanted to be on the water. When he was older he sailed on countless voyages.

From 1566 to 1569 he sailed on two slave-trading voyages with his cousin and partner Sir John Hawkins. He is another famous sea dog in his time. They went to Africa and got slaves and sold them to the Western Indians. Portugal and Spain were not happy about this voyage that England made because they were giving Portugal competition with slave trade and Spain didn’t want anyone in the Caribbean waters.

In 1572 Queen Elizabeth sent Drake on a mission to Panama rob some Spanish ships. Then he went into the town and looted them. They hated him from then on. And the Spaniards started to call Drake “The Dragon”.

On December 13,1577 Drake started his voyage around they world. This is probably his most famous voyage. He brought 160 men with him and they headed for land in the Pacific Ocean. He hoped to find Australia. He was also looking for a western outlet of the Northwest Passage. Drake and the queen planned to rob Spanish ships and colonies along the Pacific coast of South America. The ships went down the tip of South America through the Magellan strait. They sailed up the coast of South America robbing a few more ships and colonies. Sailing the Pacific coast of north America he stopped for supplies and met some people that were really nice and treated them good so they decided to claim it for England and share it with these people( they did not specify what culture they were).

Drake planned on returning through the Magellan Strait but because Drake was not very well like by the Spanish so he decided to go home through the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. He didn’t want to run into any problems. This meant that he was going to sail around the world. He stopped at the Philippine islands for more supplies and made a couple other stops along the way. He finally returned to Plymouth in September. After almost three years on the water he returned home and was made a national hero.

King Phillip the second was very angry with Drake for stealing and killing so much of Spain’s goods. So he ordered Queen Elizabeth to punish him at once .SO she called Drake and made him a knight. This made Phillip extremely angry and they go to war.

He settled down a little and he was the mayor of Plymouth and represented the house of Bossiney in the House of Commons. Then in 1589 Drake led England on a raid on a Spanish port. On the way back there was a severe storm that killed thousands of Englishmen. The queen called this voyage a failure and Drake lost a lot of respect form the queen and didn’t get any commands for almost six years.

On Drakes last voyage he and his cousin sailed together again. They went to the west Indies where his cousin, Sir John Hawkins, died. While returning home after looting some more Sir Francis Drake died of dysentery. And his crew gave him a burial at sea.

I enjoyed this book very much. It was a very detailed book and I learned a lot of this about how it was in the 1600’s that I didn’t know before. I think that I picked a very good explorer because he wasn’t just an explorer he was a sea dog, a pirate. He terrorized people and I thought that was cool. There were many pictures and maps in my book. It helped me understand his voyages and the routes that he took by looking at the maps. Francis Drake was the best explorer in the 1600’s to me. This book criticized a lot of other explorers and made Drake seem like the most important voyager, I liked what the author did with that.

738 words